What a diagnostic report would look like.
This is a sample of the report a two-to-three-week diagnostic would produce, shortened for the web. The firm is invented and every figure is illustrative. The structure, the method and the level of detail are what a real report would have.
Example Engineering Ltd.
Civil and geotechnical consultancy · 140 staff · Three offices · Standard office, drawing and accounting software
Contents
- 1. Summary for partners — One page. What to do first, and why. p. 2
- 2. Workflow map — How proposals and reports really move, with hours at each step. p. 3
- 3. Ranked opportunities — Every candidate scored on hours, effort and risk. p. 6
- 4. Data and security readiness — What must be fixed before anything is deployed. p. 9
- 5. Working demo — The top workflow, running on your real documents. p. 11
- A. Access log — Every system we touched and the day access was removed. p. 13
What we found, in one page.
Your staff spend about 300 hours a month on four workflows that AI can carry most of the way: assembling proposals, first checks of geotechnical reports, keeping the submittal log current, and checking timesheet coding. The hours come from your own timesheet codes and twelve staff interviews, so your partners will recognise them.
We recommend starting with proposal assembly. It returns the most hours, it touches no sealed work, and your archive is already in good enough shape to support it. A deployment sprint would put it into production inside your existing software in six weeks, with the measured baseline reported thirty days after go-live.
Two things should be fixed regardless of whether you proceed: report templates are scattered across the file server in four versions, and three shared admin accounts have no multi-factor sign-in. Both are noted in section 4.
Proposal assembly today
Hours are monthly averages over the last six months, from timesheet codes 310–340.
| Step | Hours / month |
|---|---|
| Go / no-go | 6 |
| Resumes and project sheets | 52 |
| Narrative drafting | 38 |
| Principal review | 24 |
| Assembly and issue | 12 |
Where the time actually goes
Most of the 52 hours in resumes and project sheets is hunting: finding the last version of a resume, confirming which projects a person actually worked on, and re-formatting old project descriptions to the current template. The information exists; it is retrieval and reformatting, which is exactly what AI carries well.
Every candidate, scored.
| # | Workflow | Hours / month nowa | Afterb | Effort | Risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Proposal assembly | 120 | 45 | Medium | Low |
| 2 | Geotechnical report checks | 80 | 38 | Medium | Low |
| 3 | Submittal log upkeep | 60 | 25 | Low | Low |
| 4 | Timesheet coding checks | 40 | 15 | Low | Low |
a Taken from your own timesheet codes and staff interviews, so your partners recognise the numbers.
b An estimate from the working demo built on your documents. Labelled as an estimate; replaced by a measurement thirty days after go-live.
Before anything is deployed.
| Item | Finding | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Proposal archive | Shared drive, consistent structure since 2022. Usable as-is. | Ready |
| Report templates | Four versions circulating on the file server. Consolidate to one before automating report checks. | Needs cleanup |
| Office software | Enterprise licensing in place; AI features can be scoped to named accounts. | Ready |
| Admin sign-in | Three shared admin accounts without multi-factor sign-in. Fix regardless of this project. | Needs cleanup |
| Accounting system access | Read-only reporting account can be provisioned for budget summaries. | Ready |
The top workflow, on your documents.
In week three we built a working demonstration of proposal assembly on forty of your past proposals and your current resume set: given a new request for proposals, it assembles candidate resumes, matching project sheets reformatted to your current template, and a first-pass narrative, as a Word document your marketing lead edits rather than writes.
The demo was shown to your marketing coordinator and two principals in a one-hour session. The 45-hour "after" figure in section 3 is their estimate of the editing time it leaves, not ours — and it is the figure the sprint would be measured against.
In a real report this section includes annotated screenshots of the demo on your own documents. They are omitted from the public sample.
What we held, and when it was revoked.
| System | Account | Role | Granted | Revoked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Email and documents | datum@example.com | Member, scoped to two sites | 10-05 | 10-23 |
| Project accounting system | datum-ro | Read only | 10-06 | 10-23 |
| File server | datum | Read only, /Projects and /Marketing | 10-06 | 10-23 |
Accounts were provisioned by your IT lead, visible in your audit logs throughout, and disabled at closeout with written confirmation. The same log, with real dates, closes every engagement.